The youth justice system in England and Wales

2004 ◽  
pp. 431-438
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Eric Baumgartner

Boys and young men continue to make up 81 percent of the Youth Justice System (YJS) in England and Wales, yet dominant discourses on young people who have been identified as having offended largely neglect to examine the potential role of masculinity in offending and interventions. This article aims to fill the gap of research in this area by exploring the role masculinity may play as understood by practitioners. It concludes that practitioners closely link “localized forms of hegemonic masculinity” to offending behavior of boys and young men.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Howard ◽  
Clare McCann ◽  
Margaret Dudley

Communication assistance is a form of specialist support for witnesses and defendants in justice settings who have been identified as having communication difficulties. This relatively new role in New Zealand is modelled on the role of the intermediary in England and Wales. This research provides a qualitative analysis of professionals’ perspectives (n = 28 participants) on the challenges of communication assistance for young people facing criminal charges in the New Zealand youth justice system. The findings of this study do not question whether or not communication assistance should exist, but rather how it might best function in practice. The overall implications are that more education and guidance for youth justice professionals is needed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082199685
Author(s):  
Stephen Case ◽  
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus ◽  
Ralph Morton

This article presents an evidence-based analysis of the communicative influences on children’s engagement in the Youth Justice System of England and Wales. The multidisciplinary criminologist–linguist ‘YOT Talk’ project utilized Svalberg’s (2009) dimensions of engagement (cognitive, affective, social; augmented by behavioural) to explore the enablers of, and barriers to, children’s engagement with youth justice assessment processes. A tripartite mixed methodology of observation of assessment interviews, questionnaires with children in the Youth Justice System and youth justice practitioners, and focus groups with practitioners was implemented across three Youth Offending Teams in England and Wales. Analyses synergized methods from conversation analysis and corpus linguistics. Findings inform recommendations for refocusing youth justice assessment and staff training on facilitating children’s communicative engagement (that is, enhancing enablers and removing/minimizing barriers). These findings and recommendations challenge asymmetrical (adult-centric) power dynamics during assessment interviews and challenge perceptions of children’s communicative deficits as irreconcilable barriers to effective assessment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Cunneen ◽  
Barry Goldson ◽  
Sophie Russell

This article examines critically the persistently antagonistic relationship – across the past quarter-century – between the provisions of international human rights instruments and the nature and direction of youth justice reform in England and Wales. It introduces the core provisions of the human rights framework that pertain to youth justice and it sketches the nature and direction of policy reform over the 25-year period under scrutiny (1991–2016). To obtain a comprehensive sense of the relationship between human rights and youth justice reform in the jurisdiction, it applies a detailed systemic analysis; beginning at the point at which criminal responsibility is formally imputed and progressing through each stage of the youth justice system, up to the point where the child might ultimately be deprived of her/his liberty. By taking a ‘long-view’ of youth justice reform and by adopting a systemic end-to-end analysis of the human rights–youth justice interface, the article presents an analytical account of both change (policy reforms) and continuity (the enduring nature of human rights violations).


Youth Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 147322542092376
Author(s):  
Kelly Howard ◽  
Clare McCann ◽  
Margaret Dudley

This qualitative study gives voice to rangatahi (young people) and their whānau (families) (n = 10) who have experienced communication assistance in the New Zealand youth justice system. Communication assistance is a form of specialist support for witnesses and defendants who have been identified as having communication difficulties; and is modelled on the role of the intermediary in England and Wales. The findings overall suggest that communication assistance has a valuable and ongoing role to play in the NZ youth justice system, and may be one means of addressing the rights and needs of those with communication difficulties who offend.


Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey ◽  
Pam Cox ◽  
Heather Shore ◽  
Zoe Alker

Chapter 9 starts by summarizing the findings of the current study. Young Criminal Lives is the first study of its kind to use a life course approach to ask whether the early English youth justice system ‘worked’. Within that, it has focused on whether child removal to an institution ‘worked’. The chapter then considers the youth justice system in England and Wales today, which is overseen by the Youth Justice Board. There is then discussion of what can be learned from aspects of the Victorian and Edwardian regimes, and what is no longer possible or acceptable in current conditions. The chapter concludes that Victorian liberalism believed in the public value of ‘the social’ whereas neo-liberalism seeks to segment and monetize it. In the authors’ view, this runs counter to the nurturing of an ethic of care which, as Young Criminal Lives has shown, can never be fully commodified.


Author(s):  
Sarah Brooks-Wilson

This chapter addresses the unintended consequences of a community youth justice sector that has been severely impacted by austerity policies and is decreasing in terms of staff, children, and the wider distribution of practice. The lens of institutional geography is used to reinterpret changes in the youth justice system of England and Wales. The analysis produces new knowledge on how location, movement, and ideology impact community sentence accessibility for children. Despite scant policy attention, practice locations and transport coverage operate in tandem, with one required to fill gaps left by the other in order to maintain service accessibility. Yet, in the context of persistent austerity, both services are affected by increasing service gaps and government accessibility guidance remains narrow in scope, with connections between poverty and service accessibility currently poorly acknowledged. The social policy implications are substantial given that entrenched poverty is overwhelmingly found within populations of convicted and diverted children.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravinder Barn ◽  
Martina Feilzer ◽  
Nick Hardwick

Recent years have seen a dramatic shift in youth justice outcomes and a fall in the number of children drawn into the youth justice system in England and Wales. However, it appears that children from some backgrounds have not benefited as much as others from this change. There is a wealth of academic literature on processes of criminalisation, policies, and practices of youth justice and the experiences of children, particularly boys, in custody. However, there is little detailed understanding of how these processes, policies, and practices affect children from different backgrounds. This paper examines the most intrusive aspect of youth justice, namely, custodial sentences. Through an examination of the Inspectorate of Prisons’ reports and associated surveys, this paper seeks to explore black and minority ethnic boys’ perceptions of their experiences of custody.


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